#instead of a nasty old spirit that's not even my aunt I told this bitch that I rebuke her like months ago

[harmonybarmy]

just felt a cold chill run across my forearm even though I'm sitting in front of a heater.

[skittidyne]

POV

oh man… let’s go, then. bbac originale opening scene, i guess!

Emil needed to be home at least three hours ago - he still has homework, and a shift right after school tomorrow, and he likes that increasingly rare thing called sleep, thank you very much. But noooo, here he is, no doubt some kind of stupid for it. 

But he needed the fresh air. He loves his nosy neighbors, the old couples who’ve become like a second family and the young kids underfoot and their parents willing to give him a little extra for babysitting. He knows it’s been more than his aunt taking care of him since his mother passed. It takes a village, or whatever, but he has half a block full of Eastern European immigrants giving him food and help and support. 

And it’s goddamn suffocating. 

Emil knows he’s lucky. He’s hardly seventeen, and he can still manage to keep his apartment. They managed to take care of the bulk of the hospital bills, and one perk of being a sad, orphaned minor is that the remaining mess largely defaulted to his aunt. Or the government. He doesn’t know; he didn’t get asked to sign very much. 

So hey, he’s lucky. He knows it. 

But he’s still stuck alone in an apartment filled with nothing but memories and too many not-family members tiptoeing around him. It’s been a few months now. He should be fine, right. 

He just needs fresh air, and fresh air without Mrs. Kartashova trying to bundle him up like a marshmallow - it’s May - or the kindly (and terrifying) old Ms. Yordanova lecturing him about corrupt cops and the fear of immigrants and trying to send her grandson tailing after every other thing he does. He knows it’s a rough place out there. He’d gotten mugged a couple years ago, and the kids at school are, well, dumb asshole teenagers. He was one of them until last year. 

“Hey!” 

Emil pulls his nose out of his phone to give this random-ass stranger a dead-eyed stare. 

It’s a woman, short and round and Asian, kinda pretty but definitely drunk based on the sway in her step. She trots up to him, keeping a reasonable difference for strangers meeting in the city at hell morning o’clock, but he can smell the booze from there. 

“I’m a little lost,” she says, smiling up at him, “and my phone’s dead. Wondering if I could get some directions?” 

The way her eyes keep darting around, behind him, makes him nervous. Maybe she’s tweaking out on something. “Uh, you need an uber or something?” he offers, because he’s not entirely sure she could get home by herself. 

“Nah, I live too far from here.” 

Then what the hell are you doing out here, he thinks, not bothering to restrain his scowl. The back of his neck prickles; something about this is weird, but he has half a foot on her, and a little penknife in his pocket that he’d always been told to keep on him. 

“I just want to know which way Cherry Street is?” she asks, still smiling. A little creepy. 

But he should be nice to random ladies, even if he’s almost out of data, so he pulls up google maps. “I… think it’s that way?” His little arrow is freaking out, but he’s decent with directions. 

A sudden chill trickles down his spine. He can’t help but shiver, huddling into his hoodie a bit more, but his gps stops freaking out, at least. 

“Oh. Wait, wrong way, the arrow thing was messed up. Fuckin’ Google. Looks like it’s the next block up that way.” 

“Thanks,” the woman replies. 

He shrugs, about to take his leave and probably head home like a normal human being, but then he notices her expression. She looks mad, and he takes a step back, digging around for his sad little knife. 

“What are you doing,” she hisses at him. 

He thinks that’s a pretty fair question to ask of her. She’s probably high as a kite - confirmed when she lunges at him. 

Emil swears and ducks away from her grab. He has too much shit in his pockets to bother digging, but hey, 911 is three button presses. 

The woman is a couple steps away from him, swaying on her feet again, looking like she’s seen a ghost. “Wait,” she croaks, looking between empty space and where he’s dialing, “wait, you’re not supposed to be doing that!” 

Like fuck he’s not gonna call the cops on her drunk ass if she swings at him again. He won’t be here as soon as he calls, sure, but he’s not above using them as a threat. “I’m calling the cops if you come at me again, or I’ll let you go be a drunk asshole somewhere else. But I will deck your ass if you pull anything else.” 

“No, not you,” the crazy lady groans. 

Just when he thinks he’s lucky that she hasn’t pulled anything on him, she starts digging around in her bag. 

Instead of a knife, though, she pulls out a little packet of some kind of powder. Emil immediately scrambles backward, mentally apologizing to every well-meaning lecture on human trafficking and missing immigrants he’d ever received from those nosy babushkas, and swings his phone like a brick. 

She blows a handful of whitish powder into his face. It feels like he’s been slapped in the face with an entire anesthesia team. Emil nearly drops where he stands, but he manages to remain kinda upright, so score one: him. “You… did what…” His tongue feels like cottony lead and his vision swims. He is never going to be allowed outside of home or school ever again. 

He finally trips over his own feet. He doesn’t crack his head open on the sidewalk, so that’s nice, and he tries speaking again. (He doesn’t quite process the fact that he fell but didn’t fall.) 

“The hell did you do,” Emil tries growling. He shakes his head, and somehow manages to regain his own balance. He probably can’t move, but hey, upright is nice. 

The crazy woman points at something beside Emil. “You’re trying to become a luck spirit!” 

His ears ring, but he’s pretty sure he heard her right. He hopes she didn’t just give him whatever she’s on. He wishes he could feel his fingers enough to dial 911 like he threatened. 

“Are too!” the woman adds, after no real reply. 

“What kinda shit are you on, lady,” he bites out. She gives him a bewildered look, like she’d halfway forgotten she just drugged and attacked him, and Emil manages to fall forward in a way that could be construed as a punch. He’s still bigger than her. If he can just get her on the ground, he can try to stagger away, at least to a busier road.

To his surprise, the woman grabs his arm and hauls him back upright. “You’re gonna end up hurting yourself!” She wrestles to maintain a grip on him, flailing with her other arm at whatever the fuck she’s hallucinating, and Emil is two seconds from gnawing on her to try to break free. 

She wins against whatever she’s fighting (that isn’t him), and holds still long enough for him to elbow her in the face. She goes down like a sack of potatoes. 

“You don’t even feel pain anymore,” she scolds herself. 

“I’ll show you pain, psycho drunk mugger lady!” he snaps back. Score is Emil: two, psycho lady: one. (He’s giving her the one for drugging him.)

The woman clambers back to her feet and looks at him like he’s a misbehaving kindergartner. “Listen, kid,” she begins, and Emil nearly swings at her again. 

“Back off!” He raises his fists for good measure. 

“Why the hell is your first instinct here to get into a fight?!”

“Why’re you a crazy bitch?” He is not in the wrong here. 

“Okay, I’m getting real tired of your mouth, and I’m trying to save your ass from something nasty, you little prick.” She grabs his arm on his next swing, and Emil can’t break away fast enough. “Sleep!”

His retort is on the tip of his thick tongue, but this is way worse than the drugs. He falls into darkness like sinking underwater. 

The last thing he sees is not the face of his attacker, but a soft, golden glow. 

Fuck.